Andranik Ozanian - Legacy and Memory

Legacy and Memory

Andranik's remains were originally to be buried in Armenia, but Soviet authorities refused entry. His body eventually returned to Armenia on February 17, 2000 and was reburied at the Yerablur military cemetery on February 20. In his speech during the reburial ceremony President Robert Kocharyan described Andranik as "one of the greatest sons of the Armenian nation".

In 1995 General Andranik's Museum was founded in Komitas Park of Yerevan, but was soon closed, because the building was privatized. It was reopened on September 16, 2006 by Ilyich Beglarian as the Museum of Armenian Fedayee Movement named after Andranik Ozanian.

Andranik's memory is still held in high regard among Armenians. Contemporaries, such as the noted Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan, politician Avetis Aharonyan, Bolshevik leaders Stepan Shahumyan, Anastas Mikoyan, and Soviet Armenian Marshal Ivan Bagramyan were fulsome in their praise for the military commander, something the The Literary Digest highlighted in a January 1920 artilce, describing him as "Armenia's Robin Hood, Garibaldi, and Washington, all in one. He is the ideal patriot of whom broadside ballads are published, and whose name inspires songs sung by the Armenian at his workbench, by the Armenian housewife at her tasks, by their children at play."

During the Soviet era, little was written about Andranik, especially for a new generation of Armenians born in the decades following Armenia's sovietization. On June 30, 1963 Paruyr Sevak, a prominent Soviet Armenian author, wrote an essay about Andranik after reading one of his soldier's notes. Sevak lamented that his generation knew "little about Andranik, almost nothing." He continues, "because knowing nothing about Andranik means to know nothing about modern Armenian history."

Many statues and memorials of Andranik exist not only in Armenia, but also in Bucharest (1936), Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris (1945), Nicosia (1990), Le Plessis-Robinson, Paris (2005), Varna (2011), and Armavir, Russia.

In 1967, secretly from the Soviet authorities, a statue by Mikayel Avetisyan was erected in the village of Ujan. Since the independence in 1991, many statues have been erected throughout Armenia: in Voskevan (1990) and Navur villages (early 1990s) of Tavush, in Gyumri's Victory Park (1994) and in front of the Arteni village school (2011). Three Andranik statues can be found in the Armenian capital Yerevan: in Malatia-Sebastia district (by Rafik Sargsyan, 2000), near the St. Gregory Cathedral (by Ara Shiraz, 2002) and outside the Fedayee Movement Museum (2006). In 2000 a memorial was built in Yerablur military cemetery, where his body was buried after being transferred from Paris.

In May 2011 a statue of Andranik by Marat Minasyan was to opened in Volonka village near Sochi, Russia, but the it was removed on May 27, under pressure from Turkey, which earlier announced that they would boycott the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics if the statue remains standing.

A memorial exists in Richardson Springs, California, where Andranik died in 1927.

A great number of schools, streets, squares both in Armenia (in Yerevan and other major cities) and abroad: Córdoba, Argentina, Plovdiv and Varna in Bulgaria, Meudon, Paris and a section of Connecticut Route 314 state highway running entirely within Wethersfield, Connecticut are named after Andranik. General Andranik Station of the Yerevan Metro was opened in 1989 as Hoktemberyan Station and was renamed for Andranik in 1992.

During the Nagorno-Karabakh War, a volunteer regiment named "General Andranik" operated in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh under the commanding of Gnel Manukyan.

Many Armenian public organizations in the diaspora are named after him as well.

On September 11, 2012, during the Bulgaria vs Armenia football match in Sofia's Levski National Stadium, Armenian fans have bought a giant poster with pictures of General Andranik and Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan, who was brutally murdered in 2004 by Azeri leitenant Ramil Safarov during the NATO English-language courses. The text on the poster read: "Andranik's children are also heroes... The work will be done".